Calzones

While looking around on Frugal Upstate, I came across a bread machine recipe for a clone of Pizza Huts' pizza crust. I must say that I am not a fan of Pizza Hut's pizza at all, but this recipe was getting rave reviews. She uses this dough to make pizza, bread sticks and calzones. This is one of those recipes that was found on yet another blog and it was tweaked to their liking. And on...and on... The more I read about it, the more my curiosity was peaking.

There's just a handful of ingredients involved in making this dough and since I had everything in the cupboards to make it, I decided to get it a try. Five minutes is all that it took to layer everything into my bread machine. I set it on the "dough" setting and then 1 hr. and 50 minutes later I had a really nice, pliable dough waiting on me.

It's been a while since we've eaten really good calzones. It's hard to find good Italian food around our area so we were really hoping that these would turn out great. I'll let the cat out of the bag early.....this recipe didn't disappoint!

Here is the recipe:

Pizza Hut Style Pizza Dough

1 1/3 cups water
2 tsp sugar
1 1/4 tsp salt
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp cornmeal
3 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp onion powder
1 1/2 tsp yeast

Add ingredients to bread machine, according to manufacturer’s settings, and run dough setting. After the machine beeps, roll out the dough.

You can roll the dough into two 9×13″ pizzas (great for kid’s lunches!) or into two medium pizzas or a large pizza and an order of breadsticks (as instructed above).

Parbake the crust with a drizzle of olive oil on it at 450 degrees for ten minutes. Remove the crust and add sauce and toppings.

If making breadsticks, add your breadsticks at this time. Place into the oven for another ten to fifteen minutes or until golden and bubbly.

What I did to make calzones:

I cooked red sauce* and sauteed the sausage and mushrooms* and then set them up, along with shredded mozzarella cheese, assembly style on the table, along with 2 large baking sheets.

Recipe for Sauce:
2 lg. cans of crushed tomatoes with basil
1/4 C. olive oil
1 TBSP Italian seasoning
2 tsp onion powder
2 tsp garlic powder

In a medium-sized pot, warm olive oil and seasoning. Stir in crushed tomatoes. Cook over medium heat until heated through and then turn heat down to low. Continue to simmer while preparing the rest of the meal. Do not cover with a lid.

Recipe for sausage and mushroom filling:
1 16oz. container of sliced button mushrooms, chopped
3 links hot sausage
3 links Emeril's chicken sausage with spinach

You will need two frying pans for this.

In one pan, heat 1/4 C. olive oil until hot. Add mushrooms and sautee until soft. Remove from heat and set aside.

Remove the casings from the hot sausages. Add 2 TBSP oil to the second pan. Cook sausage, breaking it into small pieces as it cooks. Do not brown sausage, cook until it is no longer pink. Remove from heat and drain off any excess grease. Add the sausage to a bowl, along with half of the mushrooms. Stir together to mix.

Wipe out frying pan and repeat process with chicken sausage. Stir remaining mushrooms into the bowl with the chicken sausage.


Assembly:

Dough

This recipe will make 4 large calzones or 8 mini calzones.

I turned the dough out onto a lightly floured table and rolled it into a log with my hands. I cut the log in half. With one half, I cut it into 4 pieces. I made 4 mini calzones out of this dough - 2 hot sausage, mushroom and cheese and 2 chicken/spinach sausage, mushroom and cheese. These were for my husband and me.

I cut the other log into 2 pieces. One hot sausage calzone for each of them. At the time, they wanted no part of chicken/spinach sausage in their calzones.

On the table, line up sauce, hot sausage and mushrooms, shredded mozzerella cheese and chicken sausage.

Roll out dough, fill and close, making sure to seal the ends.

I placed the two larger calzones on one baking sheet and the 4 minis on another baking sheet.

Brush the top of each calzone with olive oil .

Bake at 425*

Large calzones baked for 20 minutes.

Minis baked for 25 minutes.

Serve with a side of sauce for dipping.

**notes** We like red sauce in our calzones, as well as, for dipping into. Along with the hot sausage, mushrooms and cheese, I added some sauce.


I did not add any sauce to the insides of the chicken/spinach sausage calzones.


I served a simple green salad alongside the calzones. Everyone was really happy with the way these turned out. I will definitely make this recipe again.


This is also a great way to clean out the frig. You can fill this dough with just about anything that you like to mix together.

The mini calzones are the perfect size for lunchboxes, too!

You can easily freeze any leftovers by wrapping them with plastic wrap and then again in foil. Make sure to label them so that you can remember what's inside them.